Structural ballistic armour for transport aircraft

Abstract This paper describes the structural response of a current ceramic-faced composite armoursystem and a proposed structural armoursystem for aircraft use. The proposed structural ballistic armoursystem is shown to be capable of providing significant structural integrity even after ballistic impactwhilst providing ballisticprotection equivalent to an existing applique system. The addition of a carbon fibre reinforced plastic front panelto the existing ceramic faced composite armoursystem improves the bend strength by a factor of 3 and improves the energy to break by almost an order of magnitude.